Chloe Brennan (Hollistic Strength Training, Nursing the Neurodiverse, and Forging Performance through Mental Health) - Episode 1065

This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you that are in the military, first responder or medical professions. In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 25 % off each and every one of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions. Now Thorne is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance Project. and multiple special

operations organizations. I myself have used them for several years, and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor. Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein, the Super EPA, and then most recently, Sinaquel. As a firefighter, a stuntman, and a martial artist, I've had my share of brain trauma and sleep deprivation, and Sinaquel is their latest brain health supplement. Now to qualify for the 35 % off, go to thorne .com, T -H -O

-R -N -E .com. Click on sign in and then create a new account. You will see the opportunity to register as a first responder or member of military. When you click on that, it will take you through verification with GovX. You'll simply choose a profession, provide one piece of documentation, and then you are verified for life. From that point onwards, you will continue to receive 35 % off through Thorn. Now, for those of you who don't qualify, there is still the 10 % off using

the code BTN. 10 behind the shield 10 for a one -time purchase now to learn more about thorn go to episode 323 of the behind the shield podcast with joel totoro and wes barnett This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things for the first responder community. As a strength and conditioning coach myself who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination of wellness information is one of the biggest

challenges. Now TeamBuildr is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes and there are several features that really impress me. Firstly, there is a full exercise library, so you, the personal trainer, does not have to create that within your own department. Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love. So you blanket program for everyone.

Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition, rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own. TeamBuildr also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness data. It integrates with wearables. And I think one of the most important

things is obviously it tracks. To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and then over the full span of their career, therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen. Now, if you want to try TeamBuildr, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a free 14 -day trial to experience all of the features. And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with

Melissa Mercado or go to teambuilder .com. And I'll spell that to you because it's not as you think, T -E -A -M -B -U -I -L -D -R .com. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show European and World Strong Woman Champion, Nurse, and the creator of Holistic Strength Coaching, Chloe

Brennan. Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics, from her journey into medicine, working with special needs population, mental health, her introduction to the strength sports, lifting the dinny stones, coaching, hypnotherapy, neuro -linguistic programming, and so much more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating.

Every single five -star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of well over 1 ,000 episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce to you, Chloe Brennan. Enjoy. Well, Chloe, I

want to start by saying two things. Firstly, thank you to Isabel, who is one of my gym friends and one of your clients. for helping us actually make this connection. And secondly, I want to welcome you today onto the Behind the Shield podcast. Thank you very much. So where on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon? Nowhere particularly exciting. I live in a town called Tamworth in England, although we do have a theme park, Drayton Manatee Park, and we have the Snowdome,

which is an indoor skiing place. So I don't visit either very often, but it's nice to have. I'm a farm boy. I grew up just outside Bath, so I know Tamworth for the pigs. Oh, nice. The orange pigs. Yeah, yeah. We do have loads of pigs. Where I train actually is like on a pig farm and there are so many. It's like the best part of training, just looking at the pigs as I get past. All right. Well, I would love to start there. So let's start

at the very beginning of your journey. So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings. Okay, so I was born not far from here in a town called Nuneaton, but lived in Tamworth as a child. My mum was a mental health nurse. My dad worked in recruitment consulting. They split up when I was about eight years old. Very amicable. They both still speak to each other. I still have really good relationships

with both parents. Had a few experiences of step parents, some really good, some not so good. And that kind of I moved around the Midlands a few times. So I lived in Solihull for a little bit. I lived in Castle Bromwich for a little bit just because of circumstances. As a kid, I didn't have any siblings. It was just me. Had some step siblings for a little bit and then

didn't. Yeah, and that's kind of my upbringing, I guess, being a little... I used to relate to Jacqueline Wilson's suitcase kid pretty well. I'm divorced and my son is an only child and... That's, I think, the hardest thing for a single parent or ultimately a remarried parent is you can control who you are as a mother, as a father. And hopefully you can control your relationship just like your parents did with the other person, with the spouse that you had. But you can't control

who they're with. And I've had the same thing. That's been the hardest thing of watching my son grow up and not casting any specific blame, but certain people that were in his life in the

other household. were absolutely detrimental and it's it's so hard to watch because you can do it now if there's a line that's stepped over you know considerably then you go in there and you take care of it but if it's just you know a bad personality that you know is not exactly nurturing your child in that particular home it's it's one of the hardest thing i think for for a step parent to deal with to be honest yeah absolutely and i think like for me it wasn't

like the person in question wasn't ever so much of a problem to me um but was a big problem to my mum uh so then that situation ended badly and I think that then had a huge impact on me but at the time because it was so terrible for my mum she maybe didn't realize the impact it had on me at the same time so we had quite a like fraught relationship growing up um it's amazing now like best it's ever been. But definitely as a teenager, it was quite sticky. She was ill

a lot when I was a kid as well. So I wouldn't have described myself as a young carer. But I think I definitely had to have an older head than maybe other people my age because of those situations that I was in. Absolutely. You hear that a lot from siblings or children or people

that are sick. What about the impact of your mum's profession in the mental health world not so much you know impact specifically but what do you remember as far as the ripple effect of what she had to see and and the people that she tried to take care of um through your eyes i remember i've been very stressed um so when i was younger um i remember like probably around the time my mum and dad were splitting up actually obviously with my dad working in recruitment

cvs were his things i remember him helping her out with her CV a lot and obviously being privy to those conversations that were happening and vaguely remember him basically telling her how good she was at her job and highlighting amazing things that she'd done and kind of keeping people out of hospital and helping them to live independently and back before nursing became what it is now she she's told me before about like groups that she used to run with patients where they'd like

play badminton and It's really small things, but things that I know had a massive impact. And one thing that always stood out to me about my mum and her work was how much she genuinely cared about the people that she cared for. Yeah, so I think that definitely stuck out. But then later on, as the NHS changed and pressures changed, she ended up hating her job. And I remember that as I was going into nursing and being like, oh,

I don't get it. obviously finding out um but yeah she was incredible at what she did and she's now retired but she's doing support work where I used to work where I started my kind of care journey off and I think she's really making an impact there as well so yeah I think impact is a big one a big word that comes to mind when I think about my mum's career and my insight to it It's really sad because I'm 50 now. So I grew up in the NHS as a child, as I was seeing

pediatricians and or the GP. You know, you're talking about the 80s, basically the side of the 80s. And when I reflect back on what I saw after that and the care that my grandparents had as they were priced out of Bupa and it was the NHS that took care of them, it was amazing. And I think that at its principle, the NHS is the best health care system on the planet. But

we've seen. firstly, the kind of dismantling of it and the privatization side, and then the lack of effort put into making British people healthy so we don't drain the system as well. So what is your perspective? Because you've got your mothers and will obviously get into your journey into nursing, but you were in that role as well. What are the things that are broken in the NHS? And if you were queen for a day, how do we fix them and get back to that beautiful

system that was initially created? I'm no politician, so I wouldn't know where to start. But things that were obvious to me when I was, so like when I was working, I worked as a nurse, like a band six, a senior nurse within a learning disability community child and adolescent mental health team. I was there. So this was like one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK that I worked in. I was the only full time member of staff in our team. I was the only nurse in our team.

We had a waiting list of I would hate to even say it publicly. It was ridiculous. So we were just firefighting all the time. You couldn't really do any preventative work, which is the most effective work in mental health and challenging behavior that I worked in. And yeah, it was. It was like an impossible task. Like I went into nursing because I wanted to help people and I just couldn't, I couldn't do that. And I was so stressed doing it and making no impact. And

I just felt terrible. Like there were kids who were suicidal. I had parents who were suicidal because their kids were so poorly. Schools overwhelmed because they couldn't manage the behavior of

the. kids that were there so obviously in my niche of learning disability challenging behavior is a big thing and the the children we were working with couldn't always communicate what was going on so that was going on so education's then getting impacted um and i think covid was a big one that really hit everything hard and kind of made waiting lists super long and we still haven't recovered from that and that's only like my perspective from being in a really tiny part of the NHS but

I know now seeing like my clients for example who maybe have health problems and have to wait x amount of time to get an appointment or be seen and I think when when people do receive the care the care is still very good because most healthcare professionals really care about what they do but they get a bad rap because the system is broken. Yeah, no, it's funny. There's a show in America at the moment called The Pit

and it's set in an ER in Pittsburgh. And it's actually one of the guys that was in ER, the original cast years ago. But it's very, very gritty. And there's this, you know, you see the ER and you see them overwhelmed. You see the triage area just packed full of patients, which is funny because when we go to COVID, that's what people were saying. Oh, look, the ERs are all full or the EDs or, you know, the emergency rooms, whatever the term is around the world.

And it's like, well, this is how they look. All the time. But you're only paying attention now. And like you said, it's not the doctors and the nurses. It's not the firefighters and the police officers. It's the environment. It's the lack of support. And when you break this down and you refuse to support them and fund them, this is what happens. And so the beautiful thing is

it's an opportunity to turn it around. And I hope that we can begin kind of a renaissance of awakening where people realize what is most important. But it breaks my heart. And I was talking about this the other day. When I go home, when I go back to the UK, it resembles America more and more every time as far as the overweight and obesity crisis. That wasn't the case when I was young. Like the air quotes fat person was maybe 50 pounds overweight. Now I'm seeing, you

know, obese teenagers in the UK. And this is a country that's supposed to have a tax based health care system. So you would think that would push to make people healthy and coaching and facilities like yours and all these other places

that are. forging health would be supported because you'd be helping the country but i think it's the opposite and i think that's it i think because there is so much firefighting there's less funding into like health promotion um and that preventative work in physical and mental health it's just kind of pushed to the back burner because oh my god we need to deal with all of these things that are that we're behind on um so and it's only the people who can afford the privilege

of that kind of private support and coaching and health care that reap those benefits yeah exactly all right we're going back to your early years again what about sports and exercise what were you playing and doing when you were in the school ages everything uh everything so like many people started off swimming i hate everything about swimming i hate when wet hands touch um the sensory feeling just it makes me squirm thinking about it i hate getting out and having to wash

my hair every time I hate getting everything I hate. So I quit that quite young. But there's a point to this. When I left that, my dad said to me, that's fine. But if you quit this, you need to take up another sport. And that was the theme throughout my young years that I was always encouraged to do some kind of sport. I quit that to do gymnastics and got very upset by what I now know as DOMS, thinking that the gymnastics coaches had broken all of my bones and that I

was never going to be the same again. Yes, I did gymnastics and figured I was actually quite big for a gymnast and just didn't really get it. Moved into trampolining, which I did pretty well. I got to like lower end of national level.

um in trampoline and so that was my like predominant sport if you like through my childhood while I was at school I put my hand to most things um I I did play tennis for a little bit that was like my mum's side of the family are really into tennis but I was quite terrible at it uh what else did I do all kinds of athletics mainly like sprints and jumping I was asked to throw a lot by the teachers at school but didn't and I kick myself for it now because I think I would

have been really good at it I played football was encouraged to play rugby but again veered away from that which is hilarious because it's the more like masculine in quote marks sports that I didn't want to do because of that but I was the biggest tomboy that I would refuse to wear girls clothes so the two don't really match up but uh yeah so athletics was a big one um Football was a big one, but yeah, trampolining was my main thing. But I was always super competitive,

like loved competing. As you were going through the school ages, were there any indication of your strength specifically at that point? I mean, I was good at power sports. So I was good at high jump. I was good at long jump. I was good at sprinting. I was good at trampolining. And one particular discipline I did was called double mini trampoline, which is like a run, two tricks and a dismount, put simply. And that's very like power driven. So I think I always knew I was

very powerful, but I would never have. I wouldn't have described myself as strong. I remember when my partner Matt tried to get me to lift the first weights I ever lifted and I was like, ah, can't do it. So I clearly didn't think I was very strong. What about career aspirations? When you were in school, were you already thinking about the nursing world or was there something else? So I was I was very academic. I was clever. I didn't. I found school hard, but because of the pressure

that I put on myself. So like socially, I got on really well. Academically, I did really well. But I think I. I was very stressed a lot at school. Our school was a school that kind of, if you were bright, you were put into top sets for everything and you were made to take extra GCSEs. So I think I've got something like 14 GCSEs. Who needs that many GCSEs? I think the stress that that put on me was just unnecessary. And now as an adult, I can absolutely say, why would they do that?

We know why, to get there. points up and whatnot but it was too much um so when I was in school I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do um but I knew that it was expected of me to go to a good university and study a degree that uh would kind of give me opportunities thereafter so I did initially go to the University of Sussex and I studied psychology with aspirations of becoming a psychologist. So I did want to help people. I wanted to become a clinical psychologist

initially, so working within mental health. But when I was there, I was just very depressed,

honestly. I had just had a... terrible time and i was thinking i was like oh my god if i want to become a psychologist i need to do this for three more years then i need to work as an assistant psychologist for god knows how many years and then i need to do my phd that seems like a lot um and that's when i kind of looked up and found learning disability nursing and i was like ah i can work with that population group that i really love working with I don't have to study

for a million years and I can probably work more hands on and have what, in my opinion, then was more of an impact. So I went home for my mom's birthday and I just said, I'm not going back and quit. So talk to me about learning disability nursing. What was the kind of scope of practice

for that role? Yeah, so I first. became familiar with that kind of client group when I was I used to coach trampolining and the the guy Paul Coates who was running the club that I was at was I think it was like head of GB disability kind of team so we had quite a lot of people who came quite a lot of people with autism and other learning disabilities and I remember the one day he was like you're coaching this trampoline today and oh my god I was like I cried because I didn't

think I was doing a good job because the guy was non -verbal and I didn't understand how to communicate with him. And for me, that was really difficult because I think I'm such an empath. Like if I can't make, I just want to fix things all the time and make sure people are happy. And I was like, oh my God, I'm doing a really bad job. Little did I know that I would go on

to absolutely love. working with this client group I became really passionate about making sure that people who access services could communicate in their way like that was big for me so that was my first experience of working in learning disabilities and then when I found out that that was a discipline within nurse and I was like how perfect is this like these people have such poor access to health care because they're not

understood. they're more likely and more at risk of certain health conditions anyway their mental health is worse because they don't get the same opportunities in life um and they're just a hoot like I had a right laugh it was a it was a good time I think it's a kind of population that you either love working with or you find really difficult and I really loved it so I was like right I'm in sign me up so once I'd left my degree I'd applied um for that other degree and got my job

myself a job as a support worker with adults with learning disabilities in the meantime and was that before covid yes this was like 20 i started university the first time in 2014 and then i think started my nurse in 2015 maybe So as you progress into that profession and you've got all these different autism and downs and all these different athletes and people that you're working with, were you able to integrate some of the sports into what you were doing with

them? When I was in my support work? Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we did groups and things which were more kind of whatever we were doing. But I had... Because I started going to the gym at this point as well. So we're crossing into I started lifting. Hmm. Maybe just as I got back from my first spell at uni, got into the gym then. So I was already into it when I started my support work. And I had like two or three people that I actually took to the gym as part

of their sessions. And because I had that insight on lifting, other support workers were just kind of. put them on a machine and be like here you go cycle for an hour whereas i'd start to encourage them to squat or do different kind of um movements that they had never done before like touch the dumbbells touch the barbells so that was that was really fun um we had a laugh We just had a competition that they have every year at the gym I train in where Isabel is called Down for

Donuts, which actually she she organizes. But the owners of the gym have a little girl, Kira. I think she's 10 now who was born with Down syndrome. So that obviously became a very close and personal.

point for them um so now we have this this fundraiser and it's all you know the uh the athletes from around here but the very first uh heat of every competition is the enhanced and it's people with autism down syndrome and it's amazing absolutely amazing do they have to scale some things yes but to see them you know do the same exact motions and obviously there's varying degrees is phenomenal and i had a guy on the show nick nickich who's the first person with down syndrome to do the

iron man um the hawaiian iron man triathlon incredible and that guy is a machine he would outwork 99 .9 of the humans on planet earth so yeah the diversity that that's you know some of these men and women have it might just be picking up a pvc pipe for one person it might be crushing a triathlon for another one but when i reflect uh kind of how a lot of that population was viewed when I was younger. I mean, the untapped potential of that community is absolutely phenomenal. It's

huge. And I think especially for people who are nonverbal. There's actually so much more going on in their mind than people realize. There was a program on recently, I think it was called like Autism and Me or something. And it was a guy who had always kind of been treated like a child, but they'd come up with some kind of technology where he could communicate his actual thoughts. And oh my goodness, like he was so, what's the word I want to use? When someone's

like good at talking. Articulate. Articulate, yeah. He was more articulate than me. He was.

so intelligent and it just it breaks my heart that people can't look past someone's physical appearance or what they see on the outside and kind of just put people down as all they they've got a learning disability they can't do anything which is utter bollocks I don't know if I'm allowed to swear but I like I went on to get jobs and kind of travel independently and have families like do you know what i mean it's it's frustrating how some of the people the learning disability

population are looked at by general society because actually they've got a lot to give absolutely what about i don't even know if the success story is the right word but what are some of the most powerful moments you remember when working with that population oh there's loads and they're gay from like super little things to massive things um One thing I think would be there's one guy who was kind of, when staff talked about him, he's violent, he lashes out, he's really

difficult, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No one had actually bothered to look at his care plan. And in that care plan, it says he has a pack of cards that he carries in his pocket with him all the time to help him to communicate. And I remember the one after I'd read that care plan, I went in and I was like, hey. Let's get your cards out. Show me what you want to do straight away. And it was like I'd unlocked a whole world for him that just wasn't available because nobody

had asked him. So it was like incompetency of the system. So that was a big one. There was another lady. I've heard that she's passed away now, which is like tragic. But she was in services

from a young age and we worked together. passed her driving test she got a job at kfc she then became a supervisor um and had a baby loads of stuff another guy i helped to get a bus independently he was i was driving behind the bus on the phone to him while he sat on the back seat so he could see me but the fact that he could get on a bus on his own and do that 15 minute journey considering he was scared to get on a bus with me at the start was incredible and then just like general

relationships that I built with people and with families I still keep in touch with some families that I worked with like what would it be like eight ten years ago and yeah it's a lot a lot of things really it's really hard to articulate in one small chunk but a lot of people had huge impact on my life and the same when i was nursing there was a few people that kind of you remember certain certain cases for sure what about the uh the other side a lot of people had on the

show that um have educated you know people listening to this podcast especially if they're first responders on some of the idiosyncrasies of some of the special needs population as far as us responding as a police officer or a paramedic, but also some of the dangers and them being preyed upon physically and sexually is another thing that I don't think most people realize. Were you exposed to that at all? Yeah. Mate and hate crime is

huge, particularly in the adult population. It happens in children's services like 100%, especially when you have... a lot of children together who haven't necessarily been taught appropriate relationships or don't understand appropriate relationships and don't know the boundaries and then kind of prey on each other sometimes because they don't understand that it's wrong so that some people

are vulnerable in that sense. to one another but also like in adult services especially in when people were living independently um taking advantage of people coming into their homes taking money from them um I worked with on my very very first placement she was the very first patient that I met um she had all kinds of trauma and different diagnosis and she to talk to her you probably wouldn't know that she had a learning disability you just think Oh, wow, that's a lot.

But she actually contracted hepatitis from a taxi driver that had been taking advantage of her, along with multiple other things that had gone on. It's awful because when you're in those services, you become so desensitised to things.

You hear the most horrific things, and abuse from parents to... to kids but I had one person who um mum was a big drinker he was he was a teenager and he never ate proper meals at home like when you went into the house there were just like stale crisps in boxes around um he'd never spoken a word bearing in mind he was 14 still wore a continence pad didn't go to the toilet independently Within a month of moving to a residential home with a plan in place from

us and an amazing support team where we lived, he was speaking three words and going to the toilet by himself at 14 years of age. So I think sometimes people's learning disabilities are exacerbated by the environments that they're in. So, yeah, there's a lot that goes on and I think you can never be too careful when it

comes to safeguarding. Yeah. It was something I was naive to early in my career, but you know, as we progress through and we're taught about, you know, that community about human trafficking, you know, some of these other things, you start to open your eyes. Yeah. Yeah. It really opens your eyes. Well, let's kind of transition to the lifting side and then we'll get to, you know, when you made the leap of faith out of nursing, but when, when did you start, you know, weight

training at all? And then how did that transition into power sports specifically? okay so I like many women started going to the gym walk it went this was probably like I'd done bits at uni but when I got back from uni the first time so I would have been 18 19 um would walk around the gym look at the weight section like I want to do that and then be very intimidated. I'd maybe go on the leg press. The leg press was okay.

I might do that and some lat pull downs and then would quickly go back to the cross trainer or the rowing machine for the remainder of the hour that I was there and then leave. I tried some body pump classes that I was absolutely terrible at and really didn't enjoy that much. I was just like, this is terrible. No, no, thank you. And then my partner, Matt, introduced me to, so he'd become part of an organisation called International

All Round Weightlifting, Iowa. And that was where I started actually lifting using free weights. I worked with, there's a guy called Steve Gardner. He was a high level British powerlifter, a strong man, competed with some of the greats, trained

with Jeff Capes. like awesome guy and he him and his wife Karen who I think was the first woman that I'd really seen lifting weights because lifting weights obviously wasn't on my Instagram algorithm then I don't know if there even was an algorithm then to be honest um so I just hadn't seen it before and even though she was like late 50s and wasn't lifting like huge amounts of weight anymore I was like wow this is cool um so that's how I got into lifting weights really a bit of

an obscure introduction but it was one of the best things that I've ever done so what was the beginning of that journey then when did you have or maybe even people around you have an aha moment that you between the way you trained and you know the body that you had that you actually had the ability to be very good at this particular sport yeah so I think like within the Iowa pretty much straight away um when I went down I was lifting decent weights I would say like I think

I had like a 90 kilo deadlift the first time I deadlifted um I can't remember many other numbers but I was getting past 100 kilos very quickly my squat was up near 100 kilos um yeah I was I just took to it really well and I think People were kind of like, oh, you're quite good at this. So they started entering me into competitions. I didn't really have a clue what was going on. I just turned up anyway and had a nice time.

And then so strongman wise, I actually wanted to do powerlifting when I did all round weightlifting strongman. Just I was like, oh, I don't know about that. But my partner, Matt, did a strongman competition and they were a person down on the

deadlift. so they were like who wants to do it anyone from the crowd join in matt pushed me and was like chloe will do it they put the weight to 100 kilos and i pulled 20 reps and they were like ah you'd be quite good at this strong woman thing um so i was invited down to a gym um in true chloe style entered a couple of competitions that year so that was 2016 then 2017 i did um i entered the england's strongest woman qualifier didn't really expect anything to come of it i

just didn't want to look like an idiot i won that i then went on to came second to come second at england's strongest woman and third at britain's strongest woman and that's when i was like i think i'm okay at this and just to clarify because you're talking about his weights what was your body weight at that point so when i um was told I'd be good at this I was in the 70 kilo 70 something range I can't remember exactly and I was told on that day um if you can get your weight down

to 63 kilos you'll be really competitive and I was like oh my god that's that's a lot um but I was really fortunate that I had um someone i actually went to primary school with um charlie b stone he's cb nutrition approached me because he saw i put on instagram i'm doing fasted cardio to lose weight was i like i was like running when the cars were there and stopping when they weren't and starving myself um he helped me get down to that weight class and that's where i

competed for the first four years of my career so yeah when i One of those competitions, I was at 60, 63 kilos or a bit below. Because that puts it into context. I had Kristen Rose on the show, but she's a big, strong woman. Yeah, she's amazing. You're talking about a much smaller frame pulling those weights. Yeah, I didn't realize at the time quite what would happen. It got a little bit out of hand. So talk to me about that.

Lead me through that journey as a competitor for us and we'll get to the coaching and training

side. okay oh goodness so yeah it was a bit of a roller coaster really I the first year I totally didn't expect um and it was truly amazing and at that time I was watching people like Donna Moore, Jenny Todd, Farrah Fonseca they were all going off and competing at the Arnold which at the time was world's strongest woman we didn't have OSG that we have now So my ultimate dream was I just want to be able to compete at the Arnold. I didn't want to win, didn't want to

podium. I just wanted to be good enough to compete there. That was my ultimate. So over the next couple of years, I did pretty well. I continued to podium at things. My second year was really hard, actually, because I'd had such a good first year. I felt a lot of pressure. There wasn't any pressure. It was, of course, internal. But

I thought. people expected things of me so that was I put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself and didn't enjoy it as much as I should have at times um but did did really well I then qualified for my first Arnold through Britain's Strongest Woman and I went and competed there in 2020 that was my first ever international competition and I came fourth so in the Arnold you basically have Two days of prelims and a finals day. Only

the top four make the finals. And considering my dream was to compete at the Arnold, I let out the loudest scream you've ever heard when I realized I did make finals. Yeah, it was wild. So I finished up fourth there. And that's when I was like, oh, we play internationally now. I did my first ever World's Strongest Woman OSG in 2021. And I came fifth in the under 64s again. I was like, ha, I won the yoke event, which I

was like, didn't expect. Everyone was telling me I would, but I didn't really have any benchmark. I didn't know what to compare it to. So that was a highlight. That was really cool. 2022 was the year for me, I think. Just insane. So I entered

the Arnold Amateur for that year as well. and came second which podium at the arnold was blew my mind um but i saw that they were doing the dinny stone record that year and i was like huh but you haven't invited me and i so i did do the dinnies in 2019 missed that bit out that was quite significant um and they were inviting all of the pro women who had never touched the dinny stones and i was like well Sometimes you have to chase your own opportunities. So I emailed

around and did get in and took the record. That was huge for me because obviously competing against Rebecca Roberts and Donna Moore. Absolutely. Like Donna Moore at the time had won three World's Strongest Woman titles. Rebecca was the current World's Strongest Woman in the open class. And I was the one who took the record. I was like, oh, I'm quite strong. I can I think I can do

well. And from there. I think the rest the rest of that year then I was like I want I was confident enough to say I wanted to win things and to actually go for it whereas before I think I've been oh it would be nice to participate and my mindset flicked like I want to win because it feels really good so um I won the Arnold Pro UK that year and then I absolutely bombed at Worlds I came 14th um And I had someone say to me, I understood after we had a conversation, it was crossed wires.

We just misunderstood each other. But she basically told me if I didn't do certain things that some people do in this sport, I would never be able to hang with the people at the top. Like I just it was impossible for me to be competitive in that weight class. So that's I'd moved up to under 73s at this point. And I like a challenge. So the following year, 2023, I won Europe's Strongest Woman, won Natural World's Strongest Woman and came third at OSG. And I think that was where

I peaked. So just so I'm clear, the actual strongest man or woman events are not natural athletes? No. So, yeah, there's only like natural strongman and... I believe it's BNSF and the World Heavy events. They're the tested competitions and others are not. Gotcha. So that's a hell of an achievement then. Yeah, it felt pretty significant. To me, it doesn't matter. I've never been one to say it's unfair. I choose to compete in that federation and I believe that if I work hard enough, there's

no reason why I can't compete. which I have done so but yeah it's I guess it's it's a factor absolutely well I think the sad thing the other side of this story and we've seen it with um you know Eddie Hall a lot of other people is you know sometimes performance comes at the cost of longevity and wellness and you know where is that line for you as a human being you know what are you willing to give up yes you might podium in this one area but is it going to be detrimental to

your actual health later on yeah that's a big thing for me like I enjoy it and I like winning, but I like having my life as well and realize that there's a life outside and after this. Absolutely. Well, I just want to do one kind of revisit of the Dinnie Stones because that was how I came across you, was that very lift that was all over Instagram. Again, if you've created your algorithms to have positive athletes and that kind of thing.

So talk to me about the history of those. Are those Irish stones or are they Scandinavian? Scottish. Scottish, okay. Yeah, yeah. So the history of them basically is the Potarch Bridge in Scotland, in Aberdeenshire. The Dinnie Stones originally were used as like counterweights for building that bridge. And legend has it that Donald Dinnie, who was an insane athlete back in his day, like actual insane athlete, Highland

Games athlete, dancer, athletics. everything um yeah legend has it he crossed the bridge carrying those stones they were then lost for a while and then rediscovered I think in this I always get confused I think it's the 70s by David Webster and then became a bit of a a thing again um and lifting them became a feat and then the rogue replicas I think are also from Scotland if I'm not mistaken um very very similar weights and they're kind of used at the arnold as the the

replicas brilliant my apologies to the people of scotland for getting that wrong they'll come after you with sticks they will i'm down south um all right well then let's you know as you're going through this and you are you starting to coach at this point as well or are you purely still a competitor yeah so i started coaching in 2020 um And I left my nursing in 2021. It was a very quick transition. I didn't expect it. But yeah, I went full time with my coach

in 2021. So had been doing that a while by that point. Well, two years. Well, let's kind of hit that very obvious point as well then. What was the COVID experience like through your eyes? Awful. Awful. Well. I mean, I think I was kind of lucky in a sense because of being a key worker. I did get to socialize and go out and, well, not socialize, go to work. Did you get invited to all the government parties they were having?

No, unfortunately not. So when I was working in CAMHS, we were predominantly working from home. We weren't able to visit families unless it was an emergency. And then I was, so that time was awful because. I had parents phoning me. Obviously, their kids were out of routine, which was like the worst thing that could happen for them. And it also meant that these parents had become full time carers for their children again and their children were quite complex and

severe needs. So the amount of phone calls we had from parents just saying I can't cope was terrible. And like I, I couldn't do anything. I just felt helpless, which was awful. Awful, awful. And then I was redeployed to a female acute mental health ward. So not learning disability, just very unwell women who also happened to have COVID, a couple of them. We didn't have the correct

PPE at the start of that placement either. Yeah, it was like being thrown in at the deep end because it's although I had experience in mental health,

not in female acute. That's a whole other. ball game but i i did i learned a lot and i enjoyed it but it was tough like it was hard trying to explain to people who are really unwell why they can't go on to the rest of the war because they were separated onto a corridor because of the whole guidelines and whatnot they would sometimes understandably become quite aggressive and confused um The leave wasn't quite the same as what it would normally be, so people felt really trapped.

I think being a patient in a mental health hospital in COVID must have been the scariest experience. As if these people aren't poorly enough already, I got to leave that ward every day. I cannot imagine how they felt. It must have just been awful. My experience of COVID was through their eyes because it was just so poignant. I couldn't not think about that. So me having to stay at home and spend afternoons out in the garden while the sun was shining hardly felt like a hardship.

I think what's so sad, and I started adding an extra episode a week during COVID because I saw all the misinformation. I saw the fear mongering and I stood in the middle and said, look, this is a real virus. But what, you know, the other factor that you're all missing is the health of the individual. Let's get people as healthy as possible. I know in the UK, Joe Wicks, for

example, was one of the beacons in that. But the healthier and happier, you know, the less stressed a human being, the more chance they have a better outcome from COVID. And then as we transition through the way it was done, I think was just done so poorly. There was isolation needed, I think, for certain groups, but the rest of the population could have kept the world moving on. And then everything was kind of swept under the rug, like we don't want to talk about

it anymore on the back end. And I think it's such a disservice because the mental health impact of that, the lockdowns and the isolation on all the people, whether it was cancer patients that didn't get a checkup and ended up dying, whether it was cardiac patients not getting their chest pain checked in, whether it was a mental health patient that wasn't getting their meds filled.

I think we're still seeing the ripple effect now and just be curious your your perspective on that yeah no I think definitely and I think also like kids that were born and or not that were born but like what that were at that primary school age where you start socializing like the impact that's gonna have on mental health services and just like education in general because then they didn't learn properly is huge and I do think it was it's very strange now like at the time

it was like oh my god life has changed forever and now it is very much like you're talking about another world isn't it's like I don't I don't remember that like it feels so bizarre it's so bizarre I think it's been referred to before hasn't it as like an international kind of traumatic event because it's everybody went through it everybody had different experiences of it but it was just so like abrupt and weird and uncomfortable and unpredictable no one really knows how to

cope with it yeah well i look at it like this after world war one people concluded okay let's not just dig two ditches and and fire rockets each other you know for for several years so that's not a good way of resolving anything so even though you know it was completely different you never saw trench warfare again after that it's the same thing you can't have an event like that And then refuse to analyze it and go, what do we do well? And what do we do really badly?

And so if not, if when we get the next virus sweeping through, have we made our population healthier? You know, are we developing vaccines if they are going to be one of the solutions ahead of time for some of these things? So we can appease the people and say, this has actually been going for a long time. You know, we'll be building trust in certain figures. So God forbid

something happens. You're familiar with that person that tells you on television that you should do A, B and C. But nothing has been analysed. No apologies have been made. No one's been held accountable when they were incredibly wrong. And no one's been praised for doing the right things. It's just all kind of like we don't want to talk about it anymore. And that's a huge disservice for the people that we actually lost from COVID. Because the only way we honour them is make sure

that we do it better next time. Yeah, we mustn't forget though, we did all clap on a Tuesday night

for our key workers. Exactly. exactly someone one of my guests it was another british person i forget who it was now but they said all that clapping did was put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the frontline workers so basically as a citizen you could kind of feel good about yourself and then go back and watch tiger king but it didn't bring any more ppe any more nurses you know anything that you guys actually needed out there yeah the first time it felt

good i remember going out and like joining in and being like Like we are appreciated for what we're doing. And then it became very hollow after a few, a few months. Yeah. I think they call it virtue signaling these days. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. All right. Well, so you've had this path of, you know, of nursing, taking care of special needs populations and you're in this acute mental health setting and you've begun training as well.

You've begun coaching. What was that trigger point and what gave you the courage to take that leap of faith when many people would have just stayed in that system? I think it was a combination of things. I think starting up coaching in the first place is something I'd never considered. I remember being on a podcast, it's British Strength Magazine. And he said to me, have you ever thought about coaching? And I was like, no, like Jenny writes the numbers and I do the thing. That's

how it works. And then that kind of triggered conversations with my coach, Jenny. She could see obviously the stress that I had at work, how that was impacting my performance. And also kind of, she knows me as a person. She knew me and she was like, and she was kind of saying, you would be a really good coach. Why don't you give it a go? So after some persuasion, I was like, right, okay, I guess we're going to start this then. Can you hear that when he's chewing

it? no you're fine honestly I always tell people with this podcast people have dogs people come to the door you know I'm not pretending to be some fancy BBC studio this is a real person podcast with dogs okay okay um yes so um I was like okay right I'll I'll give this a go I remember when I got my very first client she's called um Natasha she was awesome uh And I was like, I remember coming off the phone to her and being like, Matt, I've got my first client. I can't believe it.

Like, it's so funny, like thinking about it now. But it felt like such a big thing, like that someone was trusting me with their training. So whilst I was kind of starting to coach, I got my personal training qualifications and went on to do kind of British weightlifting and things. I just love learning. So, yeah, I started picking that up and got quite a lot of interest. I was just flat out busy, like trying to be an athlete, working full time, running a coaching business

that was doing quite well. And I thought, you know what? I think I really love doing this. I'm actually I'm helping people every single day and not just with their training. People are being happier, healthier, more confident. I'm making a difference and that's what I want to do. So do I see myself nursing long time?

that I don't know I don't really want to go into management and I'm already kind of band six and I don't see things getting any easier I'll aim to leave my job in about five years like I'll build this up slowly um and it escalated very quickly and then I can't remember exactly what it was I think I'm all I don't know I think I'm quite if I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do it I'm not going to half -arse it. And that started from when I left university. And that was a scary

decision, but it turned out well. So I think I just thought, well, what's the worst that can happen? I'm already earning enough through my coaching that it can cover what I need it to cover. So if it doesn't work out, I'll just get another nursing job. There's plenty going around. So, yeah, I remember like handing in my notice. I was absolutely bricking it. I was so scared, but I knew it was something that I had to do. And I had a lot of kind of kickback from colleagues

and not not in a nasty way. I think they just didn't understand. So they were like, you're leaving a nursing job to go and be a personal trainer. And I was like, well, kind of. Yeah, because it makes me happy. And it's the best thing I ever did. I remember I went back for.

another colleague's leave and do about three weeks after I'd left and I remember walking in that office and feeling so free and being like I don't regret this decision at all I can live whatever life I want to live now the amount of freedom I've unlocked for myself yes I have to work really hard because I now own a business but it's on my terms um so yeah that was that was quite a key moment walking back in and being like this is it and I feel very privileged that

I've always been very supported with the decisions that I make so even though my mum at the time especially didn't really approve of it because it was well what about your NHS pension that you know um and even to an extent like my dad of what about like the financial security that you've got now so but I was still supported even though they didn't necessarily see what I saw

And I know that not everybody has that. And although I wasn't as confident as I am now, I'm really appreciative that I had the confidence to do that because I know that's a pretty ballsy move. So, yeah, I feel thankful to my upbringing and to my past self for going for it. I left the fire service six and a half years ago now. And it was one of those things, the same kind of thing. had a meniscus injury. I'd had it snipped

and rehab back to full duty. But at that place that I worked at that point, again, there was that knot in my stomach about going back because I knew I was going to go into an environment that wasn't going to improve. And I was making a difference doing what I do now and bless my wife. She supported me. I took a leap of faith. And again, the pension is the carrot on the stick

for us. And I was like, screw it. I just cashed out what I had and gave myself a salary for a year and a half to cover everything until hopefully I get some money coming in. But the same thing, I woke up the next day and I've worked with some amazing people and the purpose of the job is

so incredible and so rewarding. But all the people that you have to deal with that aren't, that you work with that are nothing but... you know pushing back and toxic i was like none of them matter none of it doesn't matter rank or anything like they are literally dead to me now in a positive way and so you realize that yeah i wake up i determine if i you know lose my house and and starve or you know we keep this going and we figure out a way to keep the lights on but like

you said it's on my terms and it's amazing the power that you have when there's no emails and and you know ranks that you have to go through that you can just say i'm gonna do this thing and you do that thing yeah absolutely it's um it's something not many people get to experience but those that do no absolutely well i'm curious have you found yourself training police fire military at all um i I've trained a police officer. I do train ex -military and we do have one police

officer. She's working with my other coach at the moment. So it hasn't been like a prominent theme, but we definitely have worked or I've worked with people in that kind of with that service history. The reason I ask, I got into the strong man style training, not competing through. I don't know if you ever heard of a guy, Julian Pano. He's behind StrongFit. Amazing guy. One of those kind of, you know, strength

and conditioning mad scientists. But his real kind of rise came from, for lack of a better word, unfucking CrossFit athletes that had all these imbalances that kept getting hurt. You know, women that were peeing themselves during competition. He's like, look, this isn't normal. This is all, you know, things that you're missing in this kind of high level repetitive training. And I've been a CrossFit athlete or CrossFit, you know, gym athlete for a long time. So I came

through that arena. I thought it was fantastic. But it does leave issues. You know, you're always pronated on the bar, on the pull -up bar. I mean, there's a lot of kipping. So you're kind of... Oh, my goodness. I'm blanking on the term now. Posterior chain, you know, is underdeveloped a lot of times. And so when I started looking at his training and it was a lot of sandbags, a lot of sleds, you know, ropes, that kind of

thing. It made me realize this is what is so pertinent to my profession that we do all these movements. We push, we pull, we drag, we climb, we carry. And so when I saw you lifting the stones and then kind of learn more about you. It seemed like you were such a great kind of go to coach when it comes to it could be male or female, especially the smaller athletes. And I was one. I'm six foot tall, but I was only 168 pounds going into the fire service that have to work

on their strength. We have some behemoths in the fire service and law enforcement. They have to work on their agility and their cardio usually. But there's a lot of smaller people that want

to. be in these roles and i think that the training that you offer especially with the strong strong man strong woman implements are so pertinent especially to the fire service yeah definitely and i did have a client recently actually who was um she was in the fire service and one of the reasons she came to me was like i want to be able to do my job better i want people i want people to look at me and think that they can trust me like in those kind of life or death

situations and strongman was a big part of that so i can definitely like you say it is very functional that kind of push -pull carry that you're having to do all the time absolutely so when you got into the coaching space what was it that you realized that you were bringing to the table that maybe other coaching platforms weren't yeah um what was really important to me was in um in nursing we always bang on about person -centered care holistic care um so to me like holistic

strength coaching just made sense so I wanted to not just make people strong but look after the whole person and take everything into consideration not just here's your plan get on with it like actually okay let's dig a little bit deeper let's look at what your life is like how can we work with that to make sure you get the best outcome but also like I've learned a lot about mental health in my role and I didn't want to waste that so kind of supporting people with confidence

and I used to work in diagnosing ADHD and autism as well so my knowledge in those kind of neurodiversity areas is good so I've and I've had people who have been diagnosed as adults and then kind of helping them figure that out because the NHS doesn't they don't know what that means they're just given a label so I've been able to to work through that so that's been helpful that's kind of i'm drifting off but what makes us different is that we do look at the whole person and we

offer a truly holistic service so more recently the last couple of years i've really wanted to hone in on that so we've got a nutritionist that works with us um i have a physiotherapist who is on our team as well um as well as two coaches with different backgrounds so we like we're all encompassing we can help you with every element that's gonna make your training better but also hopefully your life and I think that's something that is missing and you like especially with

the physio you'll get a client who gets injured and then they'll go and see someone you've never heard of and then you'll ask them to give feedback and then it'll all get lost in translation and then you can't actually rehab properly because you're working on a different page to their therapist and it's just a bit of a disaster so the vision I had was making sure that we can look after a whole person and do it well and i think we have such good retention because people feel

valued not just because they've been given a training plan what is your kind of philosophy on the balance between performance and longevity you're going to have some athletes i'm sure that you coach that are looking to be on that number one podium and that's going to be a certain track but I think a lot of average people, even in the CrossFit space, for example, they're not looking to go to the CrossFit Games, but they're training like they're going to the CrossFit Games

and then they get broken because they're not doing all the accessory work and they're not understanding nutrition and the sleep and all these other areas. So what are you able to do holistically to kind of find that higher performance, but at the mother or father or the firefighter or the accountant level rather than the Arnold level, for example? From the off, I say if you want to reach that level, it's going to be a

journey. I'm not one for quick fixes. I've actually turned people away because they're like, I want to do this in this period of time. I'm like, well, I can't guarantee that. So if you're adamant that's what you want, I'm probably not the person for you. I can get you results. I can get you the results that you want, but you're going to have to work for a period of time to get them.

So being honest. from the start but also like meeting people where they're at I think is a huge one especially when we're talking about people who want to perform but our mums work full -time have other commitments and often on an initial call with someone one of the questions I'll ask is like how how often can you train and they'll go five days and I'll ask again I'll say how often can you really train because people when they start a process want to go so balls

out and want to go so extreme that they set themselves up for failure and I'm not doing that like I won't accept that so I'll really try and meet people where they are and say okay this is where you want to be you'll go into the gym non maybe once a week at the moment let's meet in the middle let's make this realistic so that you feel like you're winning straight away we don't want you to feel like it's you're constantly chasing I want you to feel like you've got easy wins So

I think that's a big thing. And then once you build someone's confidence up of, oh, I've gone to the gym twice this week, that's more than I've ever done. That's a win. And then you can then start getting into the nitty gritties of, OK, how's your food been? Like, are you drinking enough? Are you sleeping enough? And working on all of those things rather than just hammering them with volume and killing them off in the gym, because ultimately they're going to fail.

They're going to get injured. They're going to feel tired and then they're going to leave. And then I haven't helped them at all. You mentioned sleep. That's a big key word in a lot of the things that I talk about. When you were in the nursing space, were you doing any of the night shifts or were you days normally? I did some night shifts as a student, but I worked in community. So I was nine to five Monday to Friday, which

was nice. Shift work was not for me. I feel fortunate that I could choose a job where I didn't have to do that. But I've worked with people who work shifts, and it's not great for you, is it? It's tough. What about on the performance side? Because the problem is, at the moment, we're just trying to get people to understand that shift work is really bad for your health, full stop. But we've got a lot of chess beaters that are all in on the job, and that's amazing. But they're missing

the point. that you know the the rest recovery sleep is is imperative for high level of performance so what have you seen as far as because you mentioned about the stress even being detrimental to your performance what have you seen in your world maybe even some of the people that you're you're coaching or some people you trained alongside as far as the the importance of sleep of this overall performance piece yeah i think i think over training is a big thing um And that then

means people have poor sleep because they're so wired all the time. But just in general, like if it's one of the things, again, that I ask when people very first speak to me, how's your sleep? And often those who feel like they're banging their heads against a wall and aren't progressing, they're plateaued. It's because they're not sleeping. Like as soon as I say,

OK, let's. do xyz to make your sleep better even if they don't cut like i do this on the i guess like discovery call before they're even a client i might do this and then they'll message me a few days like oh i feel really great and i'm like well yeah of course you do because you've closed your eyes and healed um it's it's one of the fundamentals and it's i know when people And my clients will know as well because they'll put in their check -in, I didn't sleep well this

week, and their sessions will reflect that. But we try to raise that awareness. So in their check -in every week, it's what are your energy levels like? How's your recovery? And in the sub to that question, it's how's your food been? How have you slept? What's your hydration been like? And so often they'll be like, oh, I had loads of crap sessions because I didn't sleep. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, what about that as far as the ethos of how someone is feeling versus the

weights that they're given that day? So we use RPE a huge amount because I think, especially when we're working with everyday people who aren't, they're not full -time athletes. They have a life. They have all the stresses. They're not

going to be at their best every time. So to expect them to... lift more and more and more all the time isn't doable um so yeah we utilize the rpe scale a huge amount getting people to be honest with that is another matter but we really try to explain that of like so your rpe eight on a day where you're well rested you haven't been at work for a few days you're fueled up really well it's going to be heavier than if you haven't had any sleep you've had an argument with your

partner and you haven't eaten all day and that's okay but they're both still rpe8 you're still training at the same intensity it's just relative to how you're feeling on that day um so yeah i think it's very important to take into consideration and again it sets people up for success because if i'm programming and i do program percentages at times especially if people are in prep for competitions there's certain weights that they need to hit and that's how it is um but most

of the time I'll use RPE because if I set someone a number and they're not recovered they don't hit the number what are they going to say to me I'm shit I'm a failure I can't do it I'm a bad athlete and that isn't conducive to performance at all like because mindset comes into it right so if you constantly are failing in your sessions because you can't meet what's required of you your mindset's going to take a battering and then again your performance will get hindered

even more I was talking to someone the other day. One of the things I do, I just do a once a week, I coach a free class for tactical athletes. So please fire me. And every so often, every like two or three months, we'll do a sandbag walk to a parking structure, carry the bags all the way up to the roof, drop them. And then I'll just check in with everyone. But how are you doing? Why are you even coming to class at the

moment? You know, what's going on at home? And it's amazing that you start learning about people's background and their true why. Like one was a victim of domestic abuse, so she wants to be stronger. And another one's going through a divorce and another one's doing just fine at the moment, you know, whatever it is. And so you can tap into that a lot more rather than, you know, what do you want? Oh, I just I want to be more cut. I want to lose weight. I want to be stronger.

And those are very, very kind of wishy washy adjectives. You have a really interesting lens, though, because you came from that mental health space first and then got into coaching. Talk to me about the importance of understanding the athletes' mental state and finding their why as far as the actual results that you're seeing in the gym itself. It's huge. And I mean, if I understand someone and I know someone, which I know all of my one -to -one athletes, I know

well because I talk to them. like we have conversations like this even if I don't see them in person we have video calls so that I get to know them and it means like I can if they're having a bad day I've got more insight into why they might be having a bad day so rather than them texting me being like I've had a really bad session and me going never mind I can dig a little bit deeper and find out why but I think it also works the other way for motivation if I know why someone

is doing something I can remind them of that remember why you started this that's why we're doing it and that's why you're going to turn up and why you're going to do this program and not give up because xyz um and i've also more recently started another business in life coaching nlp and hypnotherapy and a lot of the interest has come from people wanting to improve their performance again because they recognize that mindset plays such huge part and they've got

so many self -limiting beliefs that hold them back in their life and in their performance because they've experienced trauma they've got a fear of failure or you know don't think that they're good enough or they've had a bad experience in competition and can't move past it so it's it's uh and I think it's it's becoming more of an accepted thing and more spoken about thing when I started I felt I feel like it was just get strong but that's because I trained with a load

of big burly men i think now there's a much bigger space of like well -being and how that goes hand in hand with performance what about your mindset when you think back to someone pointing at a weight and saying you can lift that was there a negative voice in your mind or or do you think the the journey that you've taken up to that point created that i can mentality at that point I think because when I started, I didn't expect to be competitive. I just thought it was fun.

I was like, oh, yeah, I'll try that. I've very much all my life had a can -do attitude, not a can't, I think. I've definitely had doubts and I've definitely failed at things, but it's never really knocked me that much. I'm like, well, I'll just try something else or I'll try

again. I definitely have had limiting beliefs from kind of other... factors and i think for me the thing that has hindered me the most is um people pleasing and um not perfectionism because i i was recently told perfectionism is just procrastination dressed up which i agree with um but what wanting everything to be right um that's what's held me back the most i would say rather than like you can't do it it's what if i can't do it right or And people expect me to do this. So if I can't

do this, then I'll let everybody else down. Not being scared of it because I'm scared of the weight, but that kind of wider implication. And I think the factors that I spoke through earlier where I really built up my confidence helped to overcome that. But I've done work with a mindset

coach and it was really helpful. I think one of the interesting things about strong man, strong woman implements that I've seen with my own eyes, when you take a group of firefighters, they might be the, you know, the athletic rock star all the way through to the man or woman that maybe hasn't done the exercise for several years and should have. You try and get them into, for example,

you know, a CrossFit style workout. you know more often than not they're not going to do it they're going to be intimidated they're going to feel like it looks stupid god forbid you put in you know a snatch or something complex like that but with the strong man woman implements you literally say hey just push that sled over to that cone oh okay oh you did it yeah and and so i find that those tools actually create a lot more self -belief like i can mentality and

even yeah There was a local firefighter here that is a strongman competitor and he was getting us lifting bags. And I lifted more than I realized I could just by simply watching other people do it and going, all right, hold my beer. Let's try this. So I find that those tools, that particular kind of community, of course, there's a certain

point where you're going to hit a wall. But I think that taking away that intimidation of the complexity of a movement and simply picking up a bag, carrying kettlebells, you know, pushing or pulling a sled. it does create more of that positive mindset rather than, you know, you trying to do a snatch, getting frustrated and saying, I'm never going to do this. It's stupid. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think things can be scaled back so easily, but still look really impressive

as well. Like truck pulls, for example, most people can do a truck pull, but if you don't know you can do a truck pull, you're going to

think, Oh my God, that's insane. Like I had a client, one of my very first clients loved her and she would, she had quite like a, difficult job and she would be like if i can pull a truck i can do anything i was like damn right you can and even like stones like stones look so hard and so impressive but you can get lighter stones and people will be like i lifted one of them stones that are on world strongest man like because there's so much variability and kind of the weights

of the implements people can do stuff that still looks really epic even if it's like super scaled back which is amazing yeah The closest I've ever been to being knocked out was lifting a stone. And I did martial arts for a long time and got hit many times. But I guess I just held my breath. And it was like, it wasn't a crazy weight, but it was heavy for me sitting on my chest. And I remember just that little tunnel starting to get smaller and smaller. And luckily, I sat down

before I completely passed out. But yeah, the stone has kicked my ass more than any human being to this point. Yeah, it's brutal. All right. Well, speaking of that. Talk to me about breath work and the importance of breath, especially when you're doing these incredibly heavy lifts. I refer in my coaching to the three B's of strongman. And if you do not have one of them, it all falls apart. And that is breathing, bracing and your butt. You need to be able to use all three. But

yeah, breathe and embrace it. Breathing and bracing, super important. Do not brace and breathe effectively. One, you're probably going to hurt yourself at some point because you're not creating enough intra -abdominal pressure. But also I always explain it as, so the two parts for the injury prevention, I'm like, right, there's two cans in my hands. One hasn't been opened and is full and the other is empty. If I squeeze them, which one is ending up better? you need to breathe.

You need to breathe in. And breathing in doesn't mean sucking your tummy in. It means putting air in your belly. And the other that I use, the other analogy is the Coke and Mentos. So if you put Mentos and Coke, pressure builds, it explodes. It's the same with you as an athlete. If you breathe in, you put air into you, you increase your pressure, you can exert more power. So you can ultimately shift more weight. So yeah. the amount of people that I've coached face to

face as well. And I'm like, why can't you breathe? And they're like, it's hard. And I'm like, yeah, it is. And we need to learn how to learn how to do that better. So what about, you mentioned that the holistic side, I know you, you do hypnotherapy and neuro -linguistic programming now. So we know we're watching you picking up stones, you know, Fred Flintstone style. And now we're talking obviously about these, these soft skills, these, you know, these mental resilience skills. Why

those two practices? And then talk to me about the application to the people that you're coaching now. Yeah, so for me, I think this is going to sound really cheesy. I feel like this is like my purpose. This is what I've always been meant to do. It's what I wanted to do in nursing, hence why I went into the learning disability and mental health field. I wanted to help people have a better life. It's the element of my sports coaching

that I enjoy the most. yes it's amazing seeing people win competitions get records set pbs but the thing that brings me the most joy is someone saying i spoke to a client earlier who who's leaving us and she said the biggest thing i've got is the confidence to walk in the gym amazing i've other people one of my clients has been through horrendous things in his life and just hated himself and now every week he can tell me something positive about himself and he can

say you know what my life's okay considering what it's been through massive another girl who whose mum told her she'd never leave home because she couldn't be independent enough and now she lives with her girlfriend and has a really good job and is doing a master's degree like seeing that gives me a kick like I love it so that's kind of how I moved into the life coaching space and I know that NLP is used a lot alongside life coaching to really kind of work with people kind

of dip into the subconscious and and get results so I signed up to do a life coaching and NLP course and part of that course was clinical hypnotherapy and I was like hmm I'm skeptical like is it what what is it I'll like it's part of the course so I'll do it oh my god I was blown away I was like wow this is insane um and like some of so as an example of how i apply that now i've worked with a client who tore her acl two years ago had the reconstructive surgery did the rehab

signed off everything all clear but she still had pain and she was still scared of being in pain every single day like it impacted her she said like eight out of ten every day um within one session that was down to nothing she got up she walked around she didn't feel any pain she trained that night no pain she's trained ever since no pain crazy and we're also going to work with her on um seeing herself as more of an athlete so there's some nlp techniques

that i'm going to use in hypnotherapy to kind of shrink down this image that she has of herself now as kind of not good enough and a bit of a broad and really bring up that big picture of like you know what i'm a really capable strong athlete and i'm amazing so we'll do that within hypnosis to shift that mindset um someone else i'm working with around their relationship with food and binge eating and kind of not feeling good enough um but again can lead into performance

someone else i'm working with i've just done a session we did a life coaching session setting some goals around okay where are we at in all areas of your life where are you getting satisfaction where are you not okay if we bring that area up everything else is going to improve you're going to be able to focus more on your performance we did a hypnotherapy session on you can just be you that is okay um being confident and capable she used her anchor from that session today on

a log session and said it felt like air felt amazing and our next session again will be on feeling capable and we're actually going to go through the log press she feels like her legs switch off when she does log so the whole kind of hypno session will be around like feeling energy through her body into the log and anchoring that so that when she goes to do log her subconscious is like we got this it's insane like i sometimes obviously people have their eyes closed when

i'm doing it And when they give me the feedback, I'm like, I can't believe that it's worked, even though I know it works. It's still quite new to me, but I'm like really excited for the impact I can have with it. I mean, that side of it is so important. I mean, firstly, from the pain, the number of people that I've heard that have gone through injuries and then they're just so protective of that injury. And it's a mental block and it's understandable. You know, it hurt

like hell. You snapped your knee, whatever it was. But getting that confidence and getting past that. But a really interesting example is a guy, Johan Hari, that wrote several books, but one of them was on addiction. called Chasing the Scream. And he talks about this one study that this group did and they had all these obese patients and they gave them IV nutrition. And there was this one woman that lost more than anyone else. She was kind of like the rock star

of the study group. And then one day she just kind of disappeared. She lost all this weight and she just disappeared. And they ended up like, you know, tracking her down. And she had dived back into binge drinking, excuse me, binge eating, you know, fast food and she put on some weight. And they were able to get her back in. And one of the scientists said, well, let me let me ask her some questions. And so no one had really

asked about them. And so he said, you know, how old were you when you first started eating this way? And she said, I think it was like 10. And he said, did anything happen to you in your in your life around that same age? And she said, yeah, that was when my grandfather started molesting me. So that particular woman. When she became thin, she became attractive to people around her. It brought the very opposite of what she

wanted. So so many people out there, you know, the physical manifestation often is of what's going on inside. And so, you know, if you're not addressing, you know, the the trauma or the kind of life's journey and some of these these barriers, then just telling to do three sets of whatever isn't going to fix the problem. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, I want to throw some closing questions at you and be

mindful of your time and let you go. The first one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated. Yes. The first one is Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. I love that book. Practical as well, like has tasks in it. That was a good one. Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergagnon, CrossFit coach. Fantastic for sports excellence. A bit of a harder approach, but tells you what you

need to know. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I'm looking at my shelf. Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. And I also really liked Ronda Rousey's My Fight, Your Fight. Brilliant. I actually had Ben Bergeron on the show probably a couple of years ago now. It was a great conversation. Wow, that must have been... Yeah, what a guy. I butchered his name there, but fascinating. Yeah, I think it might be Bergeron. Maybe I butchered his name. Yours sounds more right. It sounds more French.

All right, what about films and documentaries? There's a documentary out now actually called Strong Woman. A Strong Woman, that's really good. There was, like I said, I watched it just before we hit record and it was excellent. It's on YouTube and it's on the link on your bio and on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, you can find it. You can find it there on the Giants Live YouTube channel. No, all seriousness. You're asking me on the spot now. There definitely is. There was a boxing

one. It's not Million Dollar Baby. I think it had Halle Berry in it. I can't remember what it was called. That was a really good film. Documentaries, there are definitely a few. The Simone Biles documentary, loved that. That took into account a lot of the mental side. And Sprint as well that was on Netflix was really good from like a sporting. There's definitely more that I've watched, but I'm struggling to think on the spot. I'll let you know. Have you seen that show Adolescence

that just came out? Yes. That's rough. Yeah, they've done a good job. That's extremely raw. And I love the way it's all from each different perspective, from the police to the psychologist to the parents. They did a phenomenal job with that story. Yeah, it was great. All right. Well, the next question, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world? Yes, yes,

yes, yes. Lucy Underdown, deadlift world record holder, full -time police officer. Lucy's the one in the, in the strong woman film as well. Okay. Perfect. Yeah, and she's got, again, very vulnerable when it comes to the emotional side of the job too. Yeah, she's incredible and just such a, like I feel very privileged to call her a friend. She's amazing. Brilliant, we'll have

to make that happen. Thank you so much. All right, well then the very last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you in the coaching, what do you do to decompress? Cuddle my dog. Training is a big thing for me now, especially this year. I'm not putting so much pressure on myself with competitions and such. So going to the gym is nice for me. Walks, I like going for hikes and things. I'm really bad at hiking, but I enjoy it. And yeah, reading, I love reading

as well. So I think they're the big ones for me. Simple. Brilliant. Now you mentioned not competing at the moment. Are you going to return to competition or are you done with that chapter? I don't know. I've achieved my big goals and I feel very privileged to have ticked them off. And I feel like now I'm chasing more business goals. I haven't announced a retirement or anything like that because I want to keep the door open. If it feels right and I enjoy it, I'll do it

again. But I don't feel like I have to. And that's nice. Yeah. I think that that why as well, you had that why to be at the Arnold to do all these things. And when you've done it, I mean, is it how much work is it going to take to eke that extra one or two percent of performance versus all the good you can do in these other avenues? Exactly. And I think, to be honest, when I started, I used Chloe Brennan, the strong woman, to cover up elements of Chloe's past that were difficult.

It covered it up and made me a strong person.

But now I'm OK with just being me. with warts and all and I think I don't feel the need to do it anymore um even though I enjoy it so it's nice to have the choice and be in control of that choice love it yeah there's so many parallels a lot of us that wear uniform that becomes kind of an armor you know and you can hide behind that if you don't do the work yeah definitely all right well for people listening where are the best places to find the coaching and yourself

on the internet or social media yeah so you can find me on instagram my handle is chloe brennan x um my coaching page is holistic strength coaching .co .uk and then into oh no that was handle instagram holistic strength coaching find me on youtube chloe brennan strong woman The coaching website is holisticsc .co .uk and the new venture is lift -your -limits .com. Brilliant. Well, I want to thank you so much. It's so hard to remember as well when you can't get the same name for

each of these different platforms. It's really annoying. And then Instagram goes and shuts your page down and then you have to come up with another one. All right. Well, I want to thank you so

much. I mean, you know, obviously. you came across my radar for the specific sport that you were a part of but it's been such an interesting conversation with your lens from the nursing and the mental health side and the holistic coaching that you're doing now so i want to thank you so so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast today you're welcome thank you very much for having me